Authority, Dissent, and the Body

Paper Summary:

This paper identifies Catholic authority in the late antique period as initially interested in the control of society's spiritual consciousness by assimilating the individual into a wider fraternity. The paper explains that a marginal, oppressed, and radical sect operating within pagan power structures, the evangelical Christians, grew to become Roman-Catholic orthodoxy, the social force in religious and secular spheres. Catholicism, in turn, became a target of radical biblical interpretation and dissent that had once characterised this group. The paper focuses on the body, the crucible in which theology, the material, and ideal was fought over, and where religious conviction grew from. This paper discusses the rejection of the human body and its urges, claiming that this was often used as a means of rejecting the social order.

From the Paper:

"Before doctrine had become formally established in an ecclesiastical structure the mantle of authority did not conventionally apply to the Christian faith outside of its own religious interests. Theological differences over the body were played out internally, with disagreement rather than dissent leading to groups becoming ostracised from the mainstream by those who viewed themselves as orthodox, but were not as entrenched in power as would become the case in later medieval times. A belief of oneness in Christianity is not born out by the evidence of late antiquity. As Elaine Pagels wrote in her book Gnostic Gospels "Nearly all Christians share three basic premises. First, they accept the canon of the New Testament; second, they confess the apostolic creed; and third, they affirm specific forms of church institution. Every one of these emerged in its present form only towards the end of the second century." Prior to the second century the structure of the church and its authority was not set, but open to interpretation. Divergent Christian viewpoints were still fighting over the manifesto that would deliver the faith into the social order."

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